Epistemology of Rape

Moral systems are based on a priori systemic determination as to what types of considerations count as proper concerns within a framework of a particular morality claiming to represent transcendent ethics. The determination of as to what concerns that are considered valid means that the moral system becomes a discursive machine where the outcome is predetermined by ostensibly “neutral” logocentrism.

The question of rape can however not be limited to legal considerations although legislation must be adhered to as this is first and foremost a feminist/LGBTQI issue and one that ought not be reduced to ethnocentric/patriarchal honor culture of discursively produced socially constructed semiotic contamination.

Is there such a thing as consensual rape? Yes, there is if e.g. forming part of a fully consensual and fully informed proper BDSM contract with a password. Most humans who are either adolescent or post-adolescent have a sexual preference for rape as rape fantasy is one of the most common (if not the most common) fantasy among Western women. It may certainly be argued that this constitutes eroticization of rape by rape culture, but the desire is nevertheless there.

Now, if someone fantasizes about becoming raped does that mean that the person actually wants to become raped? Some actually wish to realize a particular fantasy, other don’t want to realize a particular fantasy and some may want to subconsciously but would not be ready to provide consent despite subconsciously desiring becoming raped. Also, there is the issue as to whether a person would like to be raped by just anyone or by a specific person, by a number of specific persons or some “standard type” of persons such as a football team.

Then what constitutes consent? The answer is very simple, if the person wants what follows then that is consensual irrespective of whether the person actually provided expressive/implicit consent or not in the first place. E.g. if the person provided consent without fully understanding what would follow, meaning that other things occurred which she did not consent to would it still be consensual if she truly appreciated it and at least emotionally wanted it to continue.

Rape whether xeno-rape or rape by someone known is rarely reported to the police and one ought certainly ask why this is so? In order to understand this need we take a specific type of rape, namely fully coercive prostitution in a closed brothel. The fully enslaved prostitute works in a room and receives exploitrr after exploiter for what is for all practical purposes serial rape. It is common in this type of situation to experience emotional distress as prior to sexual intercouse due to social anxiety while typically enjoying the sex once it commences as sex is typically relaxing and a prostitute quickly learns that relaxation is very helpful both physically and psychologically and in particular so in avoiding penetrative pain which is especially an issue with anal penetration, deep-throating and sometimes also with vaginal penetration.

Female prostitutes typically experience emotions of shame to an extent that male prostitutes usually don’t which is due to the general societal stigmatization of female sexualities. One contributing reason why prostitutes experience shame is that the involuntary violation at some point typically turns into sexual enjoyment for her and so that adds significantly to later feelings of shame considering the general stigmatization of female sexualities in heteroculture. This is due to the implict cultural perception according to which a female enjoying rape would be a “whore”.

Jacques Derrida in 2004 pointed out that most humans at some level desire involuntary sex and that is certainly something that needs to be taken seriously. The issue of consent is typically marginal among gays and lesbians among whom verbally asking for consent is usually not even an issue unless also being BDSM. Why is this so? Lesbian sex is usually marginally penetrative unless using sex tools or engaging in fisting and so consent is usually not even an issue. Among gays is rape considered completely normal as part of a relationship whether ongoing or temporary. It is not even considered morally problematic, it is for the most part not even an issue at all, it is just normal and certainly usually not something negative whatsoever. This may sound shocking to heterocultural persons but what makes rape a problem is instead patriarchy and its structural oppression against females and LGBTQI persons alike .

This issue is similar to the feminist question of alcohol in the 19th century and the feminist question of pornography in the 20th century; namely that the real issue is structural oppression, namely how alcohol and pornography respectively are socially constructed and socially deployed in particular cultural and subcultural settings. Ritual use of alcohol every Friday and Saturday as well as on other holidays has been common throughout the history of Rabbinic Judaism yet alcoholism has historically been extremely rare among Rabbinic Jews. Christianity also maintains ritual religious usage of alcohol and alcoholism has in Christendom in contrast geographically spread wherever Christianity historically spread as well. And so the issue is the social function of alcohol, pornography and rape respectively, namely whether or not it is a vehicle for structural oppression and of course to what degree.

The question of rape is thus on the one hand a matter of function, namely is the function neutral/favorable or does it constitute exercise of structural/non-structural oppression and on the other hand is it clearly an epistemological issue of how we can know whether a provided consent is actually consensual and how we can know if nonconsent is consensual in the sense as a person actually practically speaking desiring becoming raped.

Aside from this are there general patriarchal considerations where patriarchy sees itself as obliged to controlling female sexualities and so structurally disallows/disguises female pleasure in order to as to ostensibly/actually protect females from becoming sexually abused by men. There is thus a general anti-BDSM structural bias built into patriarchal discourses on rape.

Why then are so few rapes ever reported to the police? There are several explanations for this, including the victim being afraid of partner, family, relatives and friends finding out as well as the fact that the patriarchal police generally will try to extract sexual favors from a rape victim. But there is another reason and that is that there is a diffuse line even legally speaking between heterocultural seduction and what constitutes rape in a legal sense.

Many heterocultural relationships in fact begin by rape, the male physically subjugates the female after which she usually relents, relaxes and commonly starts enjoying the sex in often experiencing extreme sexual pleasure. This physical subjugation is itself is not necessarily illegal in constituting relational play. The nature of the situation is often so extremely sexually arousing for both parties that this leads to a personal connection and a relationship thus commences. A victim of rape who does not enjoy the situation psychologically speaking may even so enjoy it sexually speaking. However, a passive participant in rape (as opposed to a passive/active victim of rape) enjoys the situation both sexually and psychologically speaking.

Heteroculture is anthropologically speaking composed of two main components, namely rape culture, i.e. heterosexual culture imitating rape as well as prostitution culture, i.e. heterosexual culture imitating prostitution. (Prostitution is partly or entirely involuntary commercial sex work.) Heteroculture is thus the semiotic/symbolic, social and sexual erotization of rape and prostitution as part of normative marital-centric patriarchal sexuality.

We need thus make a distinction between two types of rape; namely haterape as performed by an often misogynistic and/or homophobic/transphobic rapist as opposed to loverape as commonly practiced in the LGBTQI community and especially among gay men in terms of penetration but loverape is also extremely common in heterocultural sexual relationships which thus clearly significantly contributes to the vast stastistical underreporting of rape generally to the police.

The distinction between loverape and haterape may be diffuse in heteroculture due to heteroculture being socially constructed as imitation of involuntary sex (i.e. rape and prostitution), yet the distinction between loverape as performed between gay men and haterape as usually performed by heterocultural men against LGBTQI persons is in contrast usually perfectly clear indeed.

The problem thus is not intrinsically rape itself but rather the fact that heteroculture is socially constructed as eroticized imitation of rape and prostitution alike; something which creates an ambiguity between haterape and loverape which in contrast is not present to any significant extent among gays and lesbians.

This is of course a revolutionary understanding, yet is necessary in liberating female sexualities from patriarchal oppression since females habitually experience shame due not not only habitually fantasizing about loverape but also due to actually fervently desiring “being taken” by a person of phallic agency as overwhelmed by affection for her full personhood, to the inclusion of both individuality and appearance.

Current legislation prohibits many sexual practices which are neither psychologically harmful nor abusive. It is commonly presumed that becoming subjected to illegal sexual acts is traumatizing yet there is no evidence to support that in terms of major quantitative studies from representative samples. Sexual acts themselves are virtually never traumatizing yet both physical violence and psychological violence are easily traumatizing although most traumas are not lasting and therefore temporary indeed in terms of causing psychological suffering.

The sense of shame that victims of haterape and participants in loverape subsequently experience is however severely harmful to psychological well-being and so the problem is structural stigmatization of female sexualities generally where females generally tend to experience shame over “wet panties”. Similar feelings of structural female shame do exist and certainly not coincidentally so with respect to menstruation and incontinence alike.

What we thus have before us is not only a major feminist concern but indeed a question that needs to be reappropriated from hegemonically patriarchal discursive articulation by sexist heteroculture. This is so as the question of loverape is as essential to female sexual liberation as the challenge of clearly distinguishing loverape from haterape is essential to prevention of sexual abuse whether penetrative or otherwise.

Haterape is almost solely the practice of heterocultural males sexually abusing heterocultural females and LGBTQI persons; e.g. as police officers around the world commonly performing what is known as “corrective rape” as intended extra-judicial punishment.

While decriminalizing some sexual practices such as LGBTQI and fetishism is generally unproblematic are other forms of decriminalization certainly not that unproblematic. Subcultural BDSM has strict consensus practices but many such practices are highly problematic when performed outside of BDSM subcultures as without BDSM subcultural safeguards such as passwords and when needed contracts. Decriminalizing loverape, harmless intergenerational sex and familial sex might lead to an explosion in sexual abuse in creating legal gray zones in effectively permitting sexual abuse on a demographically large such as is structurally the case with heteroculture which itself is a form of structural oppression and structural sexual abuse indeed.

Sexual legislation unfortunately offers little protection other than deterrence as police officers all over the world typically try to take advantage of sexually attractive victims of sexual abuse. What is needed therefore is sexual legislation that is not only evidence-based in terms of claimed harmfulness but also fundamentally premised on profound respect for individual personhood.

The Torah/Pentateuch offers a list of “forbidden relations” and is thus the historical and genealogical origin of current “secular” sexual legislation in countries around the world as in modern times premised on essentially irrational distinctions of pigmentation, species, chronology (i.e. the arbitrary historico-bureaucratic time/age), gendered anatomy, money, and relational asymmetry (as e.g. in BDSM).

The distinction between loverape and haterape is not only absolutely essential to ending the structural stigma on female sexualities but this issue is essential to ending current physonomistic legislation of “forbidden relations” in becoming supplanted by ethical axioms of axiomatic law as based on profoundly respecting individual personhood.

However, we need first commence a profound public conversation where we learn to distinguish love from abuse. Heteroculture in virtually all its expressions is simply structural abuse and structural oppression whether socially accepted or not, yet sexual legislation is premised on heteroculture ostensibly constituting non-abuse (sic!) and purported sexual minorities of desire instead ostensibly constituting abuse when in fact the very opposite is true.

Current sexual legislation need therefore not merely become “reformed” but overturned indeed in generally fully supplanting amoral, power-centric Para-Christian paragraphical law with ethical axiomatic law as part of a comprehensive feminist social revolution of jurisprudence. Both heteroculture and current legislation are thus intrinsic to sexist patriarchy (including the structurally sexually exploitative police) and whose comprehensive abolishment we must seek indeed by making far-reaching political demands and subsequently democratically implement comprehensive feminist revolution of jurisprudence indeed.